Embodiments of the inventive concept relate generally to storage devices, and more particularly to methods of operating storage devices comprising both volatile memory devices and nonvolatile memory devices.
Certain types of data storage devices comprise one or more semiconductor memory devices. Examples of such data storage devices include solid state drives (SSDs) and memory cards (MCs). These types of data storage devices may enjoy various design and performance advantages over conventional hard disk drives (HDD). Examples of potential advantages include the absence of moving mechanical parts, higher data access speeds, improved stability and durability, and low power consumption, to name but a few. These types of data storage device usually include both nonvolatile and volatile memories. A nonvolatile memory is typically used as a primary data storage medium, while a volatile memory is used as a data input and/or output (I/O) buffer memory (or “cache”) between the nonvolatile memory and a controller or interface.